Distance Learning and the Innovative American Classroom

I recently came across a transcript of an event at the Brookings Institution, about "education technology, distance learning and the innovative American classroom." What I found most fascinating about it was the glimpse it offers into how education technology can help improve the education in rural communities such as in Alaska. US senator Mark Begich from Alaska took part in the event and mentioned many wonderful science and engineering programs developed for Alaskan Native students in order to improve their academic preparedness in STEM disciplines:

• Computer Assembly (creating excitement for careers in science and engineering by having high-school students assemble a top-end computer and earn the right to keep it by passing courses in trigonometry, physics and chemistry)
• Tablet Tutoring (providing a real-time tutor for the web-based courses that students in rural Alaska take)
• Middle School Academy, Acceleration Academy and Engineering Jump Start

Senator Begich also mentioned the Investing in Innovation (i3) Fund, which gave funding to the University of Alaska Statewide Office of K-12 outreach in 2011 (click here for a list of top-ranked applicants that year). Here are two quotes of his (in the transcript) that I liked:

1. "Everyone in DC does these cookie-cutter deals. They say, you know, if we do this program, it's going to work everywhere. Well, not for rural America, not for rural Alaska." And later: "You hear... if it works in New York, it will work everywhere. If it works in Seattle, it's going to work everywhere. They have no clue when you go to a rural community where the school might be 10 people."
2. "Our former governor, when I had a debate on the stimulus bill with her, we talked about broadband and she considered that a social program, a social service program, you know. Broadband is the highway of this century... The government interstate system is not a social program. It's an economic opportunity in connecting people."

The director of Internet2 K20 initiative, James Werle, also made very interesting remarks. This initiative "brings together Internet2 member institutions and innovators from primary and secondary schools, colleges and universities, libraries, and museums to extend new technologies, applications, middleware, and content to all educational sectors, as quickly and connectedly as possible." Over 50,000 schools, museums and other cultural organizations are already connected. An application is to give remote access to K12 students to high-end equipment at universities when not in use (telescopes, microscopes, etc). Another application is next-generation interactive video conferencing between researchers and K-12 students in their classroom.

A great point Werle made is about new online assessments and bandwidth capacity. In particular, "punching a button here... or punching a button there" is not a bandwidth-intensive activity, but enriched tests with multimedia or similar kinds of technology will certainly require a lot of bandwidth for the students to take the assessments. The Vice President of Education and STEM Learning at Battelle, Eric Fingerhut, rightfully commented "We're at the pager stage [as opposed to the iPad stage] of what can be taught on these tools that are being made available."